The above post concerns a hearing held to hear about a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on EPA’s progress in protecting children from environmental threats. It discusses the challenges EPA faces in protecting children’s health. (To be fair, many people acknowledge that shortcomings in the Toxic Substances Control Act, or TSCA, are responsible for EPA’s being unable to protect children and others from environmental pollutants.)

I’m not usually one to plug particular networks, but I thought the following mentioned in the Dr. Gupta blog might be of interest.

EPA Has Not Focused Attention on Children’s Health in Agencywide Priorities, Strategies, and Rulemakings

Includes a figure showing the steps where children are considered in the EPA rulemaking progress. The report does note that some offices within EPA more consistently incorporate considerations for children’s health in their work than others, but notes that at least one other federal agency does not even seem to do that.

In Recent Years, EPA Has Not Fully Utilized Its Office of Children’s Health and Other Child-Focused Resources

Opportunities Exist for EPA to Lead and Coordinate National Efforts to Protect Children from Environmental Threats

“…While EPA leadership is key to national efforts to protect children from environmental threats, EPA’s efforts have been hampered by the expiration in 2005 of certain provisions in the executive order. For example, the Task Force on Children’s Environmental Health provided EPA with a forum for interagency leadership on important federal efforts, such as the National Children’s Study.”

GAO recommended that Congress consider the following:

Because EPA alone cannot address the complexities of the nation’s challenges in addressing environmental health risks for children, Congress may wish to consider re-establishing a government-wide task force on children’s environmental health risks, similar to the one previously established by Executive Order 13045….

Chairman Barbara Boxer will convene the Full Committee for a hearing on the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) investigation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) children’s health program. The committee will also examine what can be done to strengthen protections for children.

Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) is also expected to give testimony on the federal government’s role in investigating children’s health issues and how that can be improved.

EPA’s response

EPA agrees that the GAO report reflects well the early history and progress of the Agency’s children’s health protection efforts. The report accurately portrays the Agency’s challenges in addressing children’s environmental health, and sets forth sound recommendations on steps that could be taken to better incorporate protection of children’s health as an integral part of EPA’s everyday business.

Grevatt also noted that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson had designated the protection of children’s health as one of her top priorities. He then described how EPA would implement its strategy to protect children’s health.

EPA will use the best science to ensure that regulations provide for protection of children’s environmental health by actively addressing the potential for unique childhood vulnerability and exposure. Our goal is to reduce negative environmental health impacts on children through rulemaking, policy, enforcement and research that focus on prenatal and childhood vulnerabilities.

Protecting children through safe chemicals management.

Coordinate national and international community based programs to eliminate threats to children’s health while measuring and communicating our progress.

That takes you to the website of a company called IdeaScale. They had information there about the White House’s OpenGov Dialogue (which is now closed). But ironically there was no link from that to the OpenGov websites of other U.S. government agencies, even though IdeaScale has an Open Government page with a paragraph specifically noting how its tool can be used by “Federal Agencies.” It even has a link so that if you’re with a federal, state, or local agency, you can sign up. But no list and no link!

So I Googled “+site:ideascale.com +gov” and got a list of hits. I eventually got to the White House Open Government Initiative site at http://www.whitehouse.gov/open, which lets you click on “Around the Government” and see a “dashboard” for federal agencies showing their progress in meeting certain milestones. When you click on the name of a department or an agency, you get sent to the “Open Gov” page for that agency. From there you can go to the dialogue tool for that agency.

However, a link to the actual Agency Contact Information for Dialog Tools is provided on that page (and yes it’s in the text at the top, but not really prominently displayed—it’s just a link in the text rather than highlighted as an important link at the top of the page). But what surprised was how many links I was surprised by how many hoops you had to jump through to get to one comprehensive list. It wouldn’t be that difficult to put a list to that agency list on the other sites. In fact, there should be a prominently displayed button on the White House page.

Also, from the couple of idea pages for different departments I looked at, it appears that you have to register to submit comments (or vote on ideas). I haven’t done that, but given the way it’s set up I wouldn’t be surprised if you have to register for each agency separately. (If that is true, maybe I can make a suggestion about that.)